Otis Pettee Papers

In 1823 Otis Pettee came to Newton, MA to be superintendent of the mechanical department of the Elliot Manufacturing Co. He left in 1831 to open his own company to manufacture machinery for the cotton industry. Textile machinery made in his shop included carding machines, especially revolving and flat cards, looms, drawing frames, railway heads, speeders and roving frames. In 1840, he also bought the Elliot Manufacturing Co., which he re-named Elliot Mills; the company manufactured cotton cloth, becoming one of the major cloth producers in New England before the Civil War. After Pettee's death in 1853, the mills were sold to a Boston company which operated them under the name Newton Mills. Also at this time, his sons Otis and George and son-in-law Henry Billings formed Otis Pettee & Company to make cotton machinery; in 1880 Henry Billings bought out the company and in 1882 set up Pettee Machine Works as a stock company. In 1897 it merged with the Saco Water Power Machine Shop, Biddeford, ME, to become the Saco-Pettee Machine Shops. This merged in 1912 with the Lowell Machine Shop and the Kitson Machine Shop, both of Lowell, MA, to become the Saco-Lowell Shops.